Greg Sterling

Posts by Greg Sterling

January 18, 2019

Report: 70 Predictions for 2019 from Local Marketing Experts

Predictions, what are they good for? For one thing, they’re an interesting way to peer into the collective mind of the industry at a moment in time. What are people seeing or thinking will matter? What strategies and tactics are top-of-mind? Predictions both reflect reality and, as perceptions of the immediate future, help shape it. This is LSA’s third year of compiling predictions (2017,…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

January 18, 2019

What If Everything You Thought You Knew about Mobile Ads Is Wrong?

There’s a mobile-marketing cliché that promises mobile ads can deliver the “right message at the right time and right place.” In that context and most marketing discussions, the focus is on customer journey touchpoints, audience targeting, relevance and location. Must less often is the discussion about creative or the role of brand awareness in driving customer engagement. A new survey of…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

January 14, 2019

AdWords Express Is Dead, Long Live Smart Campaigns

RIP AdWords Express. Not a surprise to anyone, it has been officially subsumed by Google Smart Campaigns. Smart Campaigns were introduced in July of last year, with the intention of simplifying the ad-creation experience for small business owners. Smart Campaigns is built on the same technology platform used to power AdWords Express but it offers more features and…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

January 7, 2019

What Do 100 Million Alexa Devices Mean for the Local Market?

Amazon’s Dave Limp revealed in an interview that the company had sold “more than 100 million” Alexa devices through the end of 2018. In August, the online publication The Information reported that internal Amazon documents reflected 50 million Echo device sales at that point. That’s 50 million Alexa devices sold in roughly four months. Ahead of…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

January 2, 2019

Trust Was a Big Theme in 2018, It Will Be Again in 2019

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Trust in political institutions, corporations, internet platforms and digital media is in serious decline. That’s one of the big digital themes of 2018 that will continue in 2019 and beyond. Every sector of the online media ecosystem is now rife with distrust. Almost daily we read about fake news, brand safety issues, bot traffic, click fraud, location fraud, as well as increasing…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

December 20, 2018

It’s a ‘Near-Me’ Xmas

Several of the 2019 predictions we received focus on the growth of “near me” mobile searches in the past year. In one sense 2018 could be described as the year of near-me search. Indeed, Google recently pointed out (again) that “near me” mobile queries containing some variation on “can I buy” have grown “over 500% over the…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

December 17, 2018

Google Moves Away from Clicks with ‘Pay for Conversions’ on GDN

At the end of last week Google matter of factly introduced “Pay for Conversions” for display campaigns on GDN. On one level this is merely another “CPA” bidding option for marketers: Starting today, you can choose to pay for conversions, rather than clicks, when using Display campaigns. Paying for conversions means you only pay when someone…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling

December 10, 2018

Location & Privacy: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

During the Place Conference New York, we had two great discussions about privacy and location. There was little unanimity, however, with some speakers arguing that forthcoming US privacy rules would not be as burdensome as Europe and others asserting that California’s new law as well as anticipated federal rules would significantly impact digital marketing in the US. Privacy has long…

Contributed by: Greg Sterling